November 2019 monthly global meeting of the Movement for Community-led Development, featuring a tutorial on Collective Impact 3.0 and the Water of System Change by Ann Hendrix-Jenkins, reports from participants at six international conferences, and news from East and West Africa country chapters.
Click here to view the slide deck!
July 31, 2019 – Our Learning Working Group organized it’s second special learning event of the year. Objective: To build a culture of sharing and learning from failure as well as apply some standardized tools to help along the way.
10:00 am Introduction, LWG co-chairs
Sia Nowrojee, 3D Program for Girls and Women and Matt Lineal, Nuru International
10:15 am Case Studies in Learning from Failure
11:00 am Q&A
11:25 am Closing
July 17, 2019 – Suzanne Cant of World Vision International presented their experience in social accountability via their CVA methodology.
Author: Jenny Hodgson, Originally published at www.bond.org.uk, 11 March 2019. Featured photo by Anna Dubuis/DFID – CC BY-NC 2.0.
Our world is changing from the ground up. Whether a community-owned pub in the UK, participatory budget-making in Spain, a community endowment fund in Zimbabwe, or a post-earthquake bare-foot volunteer program in Nepal, local communities are finding new ways of deciding things and doing things for themselves. And they are organizing themselves and the resources they have to do so.
Within the INGO sector, the recent conversations about localisation, resourcing and the future of civil society offer the perfect opportunity for some radical and bold thinking. As a new social renaissance emerges, there are valuable experiences and lessons to draw in from the global south.
There is a growing recognition that our collective “ubuntu” – the ties that bind us together as humans – is broken. Digital technologies and social media mean that we are more connected than ever, and yet distrust, isolation and fragmentation characterise our social condition. Increasingly, this global phenomenon has translated into political spaces, as we’ve seen with Brexit, Trump’s election and the rise of right-wing populist parties across Europe.
Societal divides are no longer as simple as north-south or “developed”-“developing”: inequalities within countries are as great as they are between them. Initiatives that set out to organise, mobilise and engage people where they are, to re-connect neighbours with each other and reignite a sense of shared purpose and possibility are crucial to countering these negative forces.
The world needs community weavers and bridge-builders, people and institutions who can instil hope and build power at the margins of our societies, in villages, towns, cities around the world. This new social renaissance is characterised by distributed, citizen-led networks and “relationalism” rather individualism.
Over the last twenty years, a quiet revolution has been taking place in communities around the world, often despite rather than because of the big machinery of international development aid. Community philanthropy has emerged as a way of organising, as a development strategy and as a set of institutions in countries as diverse as Brazil, Kenya, Russia and Vietnam.
These initiatives have been shaped by local context and culture, and have been led by individuals concerned about disenchantment and disengagement at the community level, frustrated by the failures of traditional development aid. They are inspired by the belief that without local resources, local leadership and local buy-in, development projects will continue to land like fireworks – to flash spectacularly and then die.
Although many of these local funds and foundations – such as the Kenya Community Development Foundation, Tewa – the Nepal Women’s Fund and the Zambia Governance Foundation – were established as one-offs, there is now clear evidence of a distinct community philanthropy “field”.
Take the question of money. Although external resources may make up part of their funding structure, these community philanthropy organisations seek to build local cultures of philanthropy – especially among ordinary people – as a good in itself. In other words, people become active citizens who are part of the solution, fostering collective action and flattening power dynamics between who gives and who receives.
Acknowledging, respecting, valuing and pooling local resources is a direct rebuke of the “beneficiary” mindset that the international development community has helped create.
In the last few years, this scattered and often invisible field (invisible at least in the eyes of the mainstream development sector) has started to organise itself globally, to express its collective voice as an effective alternative to a development system that has been preoccupied by scale and dominated by big institutions.
It has also become a driving force behind the #ShiftThePower movement. Participatory grantmaking, giving circles, community or affiliate funds have emerged as strategies that seek to share and shift power away from the hands of big institutional gatekeepers – regardless of whether they are in the north or south.
Pieces of the solution are already out there for those would care to look, both in terms of practice and theory. If we want to realise the vision of a flatter, networked world driven from the ground up (rather than the funding down), we will all need to join forces, in solidarity, and in the case of big institutions, that may require some fundamental re-writing of roles.
Global Fund for Community Foundations
Jenny has been the executive director of the Global Fund for Community Foundations since 2006.
This was the first Learning Session organized by the newly-formed CLD Learning Working Group, which evolved from the Locus Learning Working Group. Co-chairs: Matt Lineal (Nuru International) and Sia Nowrojee (3D Program for Girls and Women)
Brian Viani, Leadership & Training Strategic Advisor, Nuru International, From ‘Capacity Building’ to ‘Capacity Development’: Definitions and Approaches (slide deck below for download)
Smriti Lakhey, Chief Operating Officer, Root Change, ‘Self-Facilitated’ Capacity Development
Nurhan Kocaoglu, Senior Program Officer, Counterpart International, Recipient or Partner?
On September 21, 2018 Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne presented an in-depth look at the the philosophy and approach of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka – a pioneering organizations in community-led development that reaches 15,000 villages – 2/3 of all villages in the country.
On our July 2018 call, Kavita Mathew of GlobalGiving India shared the findings from visits to their partner organizations across 18 states of India to assess the degree to which they are community-led.
[youtube https://youtu.be/iTnycnXAQ0M]
USAID is undergoing a major transformation under the theme “Journey to Self Reliance.” Extensive field experience shows that this journey begins in communities, and that aid strategies should be designed from the community upwards.
In the past 50 years, countries as diverse as Korea, Philippines, Brazil and most recently Kenya have achieved broad-based economic growth, poverty reduction and improved social indicators through programs of what is now referred to as community-led development (CLD, Caledon 2012). CLD is distinct from “community-based projects” in that it is a multi-sectoral, multi-year change process that strengthens both sub-district governance and grassroots civil society so that communities can set and achieve their own vision and goals.
Many of those success stories benefited greatly from USAID support, and learning the lessons of those successes can be applied to implementing USAID’s future country programs.
Mahatma Gandhi’s famous talisman asks us to think of the face of the poorest person we have met, and ask ourselves whether the action we contemplate will restore her to control over her own life and destiny?
In practice this means starting with the institutions closest to the people and asking if they were working here, how would they be working? And then, how can we contribute to making them work?
CLD is how development intersects with governance – and, most notably, good community-level governance. If there are no responsive institutions within walking distance, then the young mother in the photo is systematically denied her basic right of voice in the decisions that affect her life.
Based on our research across 70 countries (THP 2013, 2014 and Coonrod 2016), we assessed this question across 5 dimensions – both in terms of national policies and their implementation. Analysis along these dimensions can achieve human-centered systems analysis.
Mindset: The first step in implementing CLD programs is to transform the mindset of both grassroots people and local leadership – from dependency and clientelism – to just or democratic , rights-holding citizenship. This process of building confidence and community trust requires skilled facilitation and a phased curricula that builds social capital over time. There are excellent examples of these processes – from Citizen Voice and Action (World Vision), to The Hunger Project’s Vision, Commitment and Action, to the 5-stage Community Empowerment Activity Cycle (CEAC, 2014) of Kalahi CIDDS in the Philippines.
“Exit as you Enter”: It’s critically important that – from the start – communities are creating their vision of self-reliance, including their ability to mobilize even more resources at the end of the program than during it. The community must own and celebrate their own “graduation”, and realize clear benefits, so as to avoid perverse incentives.
Animators: A key to ultimate self-reliance in these processes is the training of community volunteers who are the “spark plugs” for ongoing community mobilization. Animators are often drawn from and specialize in addressing key audiences (youth, women, ethnic and religious minorities) or develop expertise in a particular sector (health, agriculture, WASH, nutrition). Animators often work alongside and “leverage” the often-scarce front-line professionals, such as community health workers, nurse midwives, and agricultural extension agents.
Self-reliant action projects: There are many development actions that do NOT require external funding, and it is critical in Phase One to “strengthen this muscle” within the community, as money can be a spoiler. Good examples include hand-dug wells, restoration of irrigation canals or pathways, improving classrooms, or taking loans to purchase food processing equipment that can be used collectively on a fee-for-service basis.
Strengths and Assets: Another key in building confidence and trust is to focus on mobilizing strengths and resources within the community itself. A hallmark in the evolution of CLD is that most practitioners discover it is far more effective to organize around vision and existing assets than around problems. Many tools exist, including PRA tools for asset mapping, simple participatory “SWOT” exercises, formation of VSLAs (village savings and loan associations) and community philanthropy/community foundations through which villages can often access their local “diaspora” working in cities with access to local funding and business contacts.
The urgent challenges of the SDG era require integrated programming at the community level. You cannot make progress in reducing stunting, building resilience or women’s economic empowerment without people having access to a comprehensive package of public services (Buvinic 2016).
As community trust and social accountability improve, the community can begin a process of collective planning and priority setting to ensure they have access to a comprehensive set of public services which meet the Four-As (THP 1994):
This phase often includes the creation of social infrastructure (village development committees, health committees, education committees) as well as physical infrastructure (wells, grain mills, clinics, and schools and classrooms).
In rural Africa, it is often more politically feasible for government to employ people than to build the physical infrastructure they need. This has been key to the success of the epicenter strategy, in which district government agrees to employ functionaries if the community can construct both the physical service center as well as decent housing for nurses.
Once a community has both the social and physical infrastructure to achieve progress across multiple sectors, there needs to be a regular cycle of data gathering / participatory planning / community action through which people can set priorities and track progress.
This cycle requires a data-for-the-people mindset, so that community members are not only the source of data but also the principal client. Nearly all CLD practitioners have such a system. CARE’s “participatory performance tracker” (CARE 2015) is a well-documented example.
Best practices in this are public information boards, with budgets, targets and achievements, as well as high-visibility Citizen Charters that inform people of service standards to which they are entitled, and phone numbers to call when something is not working.
Note: A well-paid, Western-trained “expert” is likely to achieve sectoral outcomes faster than CLD, but without the ownership, scale and sustainability that CLD achieves for the long-term.
Many (but not all) CLD practitioners have a clear, measurable exit strategy. The Hunger Project, for example, empowers communities to set and achieve targets across 8 overarching goals measured by 58 indicators (THP 2016), thus “graduating” from the program.
Key prerequisites for graduation (and sustainable self-reliance) include:
Buvinic M. and O’Donnell, M. 2016 “Revisiting What Works: Women, Economic Empowerment and Smart Design https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/CGD-Roadmap-Update-2016.pdf
Caledon Institute 2012, “Community-Led Development”, https://maytree.com/wp-content/uploads/978ENG.pdf
CARE 2015: Participatory Performance Tracker http://www.care.org/work/world-hunger/agriculture/models/participatory-performance-tracker
CEAC 2014. https://ncddp.dswd.gov.ph/Media/uploads/Standard_Community_Empowerment_Activity_Cycle_CEAC_Activity_Matrix.pdf
Coonrod, J. 2016. “Participatory Local Democracy: Key to Community-Led Rural Development”, Development (2016). doi:10.1057/s41301-016-0008-2
The Hunger Project 1994, “What Constitutes and Enabling Environment for the Poor to Succeed in their own Development?” https://en.thpbd.org/1994/04/29/enabling-environment/
The Hunger Project, “2013 State of Participatory Democracy Report,” http://localdemocracy.net/report
The Hunger Project, “2014 State of Participatory Democracy Report, ibid”
The Hunger Project 2016, “Measuring Self-Reliance”, http://www.thp.org/our-work/where-we-work/africa/epicenter-strategy/measuring-self-reliance/
World Vision, CVA within DPA. https://www.wvi.org/sites/default/files/CVA_within_DPA.pdf